International Conference
organised by
Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini
Research Group ERASMUSH, University of Oviedo
Oviedo, Edificio Histórico de la Universidad
20-22 May 2027
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini and the Research Group ERASMUSH of the University of Oviedo (Spain) are pleased to promote the symposium «Music Periodicals as Ideological Arenas. Taste, Power, and the Making of Musical Discourse», to be held from 20 until 22 May 2027.
Music periodicals have long constituted far more than vehicles for the dissemination of musical information. Since the emergence of the modern musical press, periodicals have provided spaces in which musical practices, values, identities, and hierarchies are articulated, debated, contested, and legitimised.
This question is particularly significant in the nineteenth century, when music periodicals expanded dramatically across Europe and became increasingly central to the circulation of musical information, the mediation of repertories, and the formation of musical taste. Yet the roots of this development reach back into the final decades of the eighteenth century, especially in the German-speaking region, when publications such as J. F. Reichardt’s Musikalisches Kunstmagazin (1782, 1791), Carl Friedrich Cramer’s Magazin der Musik (1783–1789), the Musikalische Real-Zeitung (1788–1790), the Musikalische Korrespondenz der teutschen Filarmonischen Gesellschaft (1790–1792), and, above all, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (from 1798) helped establish new forms of musical journalism and criticism.
These publications did more than report on musical events: through reviews, correspondence, advertisements, repertory information, and debates on musical value: they contributed to the construction of musical taste and to the emergence of music periodicals as important ideological arenas.
As sites of mediation between musicians, critics, institutions, publishers, audiences, and political authorities, music periodicals have played a crucial role throughout the nineteenth century in shaping ideas about what music is, what it ought to be, and whose music deserves to be heard, preserved, promoted, or excluded. Their pages could function simultaneously as forums for aesthetic debate, instruments of cultural policy, vehicles of political persuasion, platforms for the articulation of national and social identities, and mechanisms for the construction of professional and cultural authority.
The concept of the periodical as an ‘ideological arena’ invites us to reconsider musical journalism not simply as a source for documenting musical life, but as an active participant in its construction. Editorial choices, reviews, polemics, correspondence, advertisements, illustrations, serialised texts, repertory announcements, obituaries, and even omissions all contributed to the production and circulation of particular narratives about music and society.
Furthermore, music periodicals have played a fundamental role in shaping musical taste and cultural hierarchies, influencing not only what was considered worthy of attention, but also the ways in which musical value was defined, negotiated, and disseminated. Through criticism, reviews, repertory selection, recommendations, and the cultivation of particular readerships, they actively shaped perceptions of musical value, legitimacy, fashion, and quality.
They thus contributed not only to the circulation of cultural discourse, but also to the formation of listening habits, musical publics, and, more broadly, cultures of taste. The conference therefore seeks to investigate how music periodicals have participated in the formation, dissemination, negotiation, and contestation of musical values, cultural meanings, and ideological positions, and to consider them as dynamic arenas in which different forms of aesthetic, cultural, social, political, and economic power intersect.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Music criticism and ideology
- Nationalism and the musical press
- Music, politics, and propaganda
- The periodical as a space for polemic and debate
- Canon formation, inclusion, and exclusion
- Gender and the musical press
- Class, social identity, and readership
- Commercial interests and the construction of musical value
- Colonialism, empire, and the musical press
- Migration and transnational identities
- The construction and circulation of musical taste
- Editors, journalists, and networks of cultural authority
- Periodicals and the formation of musical publics
- Repertory, fashion, and changing notions of musical quality
- Listening habits and cultures of musical consumption
- Periodicals, institutions, and the shaping of musical culture
Programme Committee:
- Francesc Cortès (Universitat autònoma de Barcelona)
- María Encina Cortizo (Universidad de Oviedo)
- Roberto Illiano (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Fulvia Morabito (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Massimiliano Sala (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Ramón Sobrino (Universidad de Oviedo)
Keynote Speakers:
- James Garratt (University of Manchester)
- Ramón Sobrino – María Encina Cortizo (Universidad de Oviedo)
The official languages of the conference are English, French, Italian and Spanish. Papers selected at the conference will be published in a miscellaneous volume.
Papers are limited to twenty minutes in length, allowing time for questions and discussion. Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and one page of biographical information.
All proposals should be submitted by email no later than Sunday ***14 February 2027*** to <conferences@luigiboccherini.org>. Please include your name, contact details (postal address, e-mail and telephone number) and (if applicable) your affiliation with your proposal.
Further information about the programme and registration will be announced in due course after that deadline.
For any additional information, please contact:
Dr. Massimiliano Sala
conferences@luigiboccherini.org
www.luigiboccherini.org
